


We built this city on rock 'n' roll

by sevenofspade



Category: Sucker Punch (2011)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 18:01:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1867236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The city at the end of the train line burst into flame the first time Araya touched the Moon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We built this city on rock 'n' roll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this!

If the city at the end of the train line had ever had a name, it had been before the war and no one living remembered it. To the people living there, it was simply the City and to everyone else, the city at the end of the line or the city of the shield.  
  
Araya had been five when the shield first came up. She remembered her mother telling her that they had had to kill the dragon at the heart of their city to do it and that she wasn't to be sad because they didn't have a dragon anymore. It was only years later that Araya realised what killing the dragon had meant. There was a dragon at the heart of every city, burned-out shells of cathedrals though they may be, and it was the dragons that made magic possible. There was no magic left in the city at the end of the line, dragon fire turned to protector shield.  
  
No magic, except the Gestalt.  
  
The Gestalt powered the shield, now that the dragon was dead, draining the life of everyone within the city boundaries little by little. If you knew how and enough of you had merged into the Gestalt -- if you were old enough --, you could talk to people mind to mind.  
  
Araya had never tried it, but she had always thought calling it 'touching the Moon' made it sound much better than it was. Her family had faded into the shield around the city and now she was alone and had no one to talk to.  
  
She had made this city what it was, refining the Gestalt from the outside to lower its consumption without lowering its efficiency and adapt ins consumption to its needs, and all the while she had ignored the little voice at the back of her mind that told her that no one had ever known dragons to be forgiving.  
  
 _Dragons were always avenged with fire_ , Araya heard the voice say when the train crossed the shield.  
  
When the train exploded, the voice started laughing and Araya realised that why shouldn't the dragon have joined the Gestalt? It was its lifeforce that had made it possible in the first place.  
  
The Gestalt cried out inside her mind.  
  
Araya reached out to it, scrambling for a thread of connection to anyone, anyone at all, but everyone had already been drained in a futile attempt to reinforce the now utterly useless shield.  
  
The city died inside Araya's mind.  
  
There.  
  
There was someone who was not drained yet. The girl was dying, but maybe neither her nor Araya would have to die alone.  
  
The inside of the girl's nimd was a shamble, like she was living three lives at once. There was the asylum inmate looking through the eyes of the brothel dancer looking through the eyes of a girl dressed for war.  
  
It was this girl who spoke and asked Araya who she was and where they were.  
  
"I am Araya," Araya said as their surroundings settled into a train car. "And yourself?"  
  
In the middle of the car sat a bomb and ghosts of soldiers and women fought around it. One of the ghost women was more vivid and solid than the others. She wore armoured shoulderpads, two swords on her back and her hood was thrown back to reveal a face much like that of the girl soldier.  
  
"I'm Rocket," the soldier said, without lowering her gun. "What's going on? I should be dead."  
  
"You're merely dying," Araya said, "as am I."  
  
Rocket scoffed. "Merely?" The swordwoman crossed in front of her to behead a ghost mechabot. "Sweet Pea!" Rocket's hands passed through the woman. "Did she make it out?"  
  
"I don't know," Araya said truthfully. "We two are the only ones still living in the city."  
  
"Then she's alive." Rocket waved a hand and the bomb was off its hooks and Sweet Pea was rising in the air on a jetpack. "I hope she doesn't hate me too much."  
  
Araya watched Sweet Pea reach down desperately towards Rocket and said, "She loves you to much for that."  
  
The bomb exploded in slow motion, dragon fire laced with Promethean fuel and burning brighter than the sun.  
  
"I've always wanted to go to the city at the end of the train line," Rocket said, holding out a hand to the blast.  
  
"Why? There is nothing here that is not found elsewhere. We are not even safe from the war." As Araya spoke, the moment rewound. The bomb unexploded, Sweet Pea descended and broken warriors were remade.  
  
"You don't get bombed," Rocket said.  
  
Araya looked at the fight that was restarting around them and raised an eyebrow.  
  
"You haven't been bombed in seventy years. Is it true you have skies clear enough to see the stars?" Rocket sounded like she was voicing dreams she had never voiced before.  
  
"Yes," Araya said. She took control of the mindscape and now they were standing on top of the tallest building in the city, where you could touch the shield if you stood on tip-toes and the stars were shining like they'd never shone in life. "Is it true they have dragons in the world outside?"  
  
Rocket looked briefly guilty before finally lowering her gun. "Is it true you can touch the moon?"  
  
"Not in the way you mean." Araya spread out her hands. "This -- meeting mind to mind in the Gestalt -- is what we call touching the moon."  
  
"Oh," Rocket said, the sound tiny and broken. "It gave me hope to think there was somewhere wehere we could touch the moon. I thought, if we can do that, what can't we do?"  
  
Araya reached out a hand and plucked a star from the night. She held it out to Rocket. "It gave me hope to know that there were still dragons alive somewhere."  
  
The look of guilt crossed Rocket's face again as she took the star from Araya, then faded as she raised it in a toast. "To hope."  
  
"To hope," Araya echoed as a dragon flew over the stars and neither of them died alone.


End file.
